Reading Romans Research Articles

Reading the Bavli in Iran

Recently, scholars have begun to reexamine the Babylonian Talmud in light of its Sasanian Iranian context A fair number of parallels have thus far been adduced and analyzed. However, there has been relatively little theoretical discussion regarding the implications of contextualizing the Bavli. This article articulates one methodological problem by, on the one hand emphasizing both the Bavli's apparent insularity from non-Jewish Sasanian literature and its indeptedness to Palestinian rabbinic Judaism, and on the other hand, by describing the dynamanism of Sasanian cultures of religious learning which flourished within roughly the same time and space. By analyzing the Bavli's discussions of "anatomical dualism" at Sanhedrin 38b-39a, this paper advances a method of interpretation which highlights the Bavli's own processes of reading Roman Palestinian rabbinic texts in a Sasanian Babylonian context.

Understanding Genre and Medieval Romance (review)

Reviewed by: Understanding Genre and Medieval Romance Roger Nicholson Whetter, K. S., Understanding Genre and Medieval Romance, Aldershot, Ashgate, 2008; hardback; pp. 218; 12 b/w illustrations; R.R.P. £55.00; ISBN 9780754661429 Keith Whetter's ambitions in Understanding Genre and Medieval Romance are large, if we trust his title; their actual reach encompasses both less and more. For the most part, he discusses genre as it bears on medieval English romances. But, although not mentioned in the title, Morte Darthur also proves significant – taking up almost a third of the book – perhaps suggesting it is Whetter's real object all along. In his compact account of genre, based in Frye and Fowler – representatives of different approaches – Whetter questions whether genre, as textual contract, is socially or formally established, and tackles important breaks like those between genre and mode, theory and history. He argues that genres are properly established by reference to actual texts, within periods, in line with practices recognized by composers and consumers, making up what he terms a 'community of users'. He denies that they necessarily relate to social experience, by social or ideological function. Yet, although sympathetic to Frye's semantic, modal typology, he insists on the historical specificity of genres, but prefers to define them in formalist, syntactic terms, like Propp's fairy tale. Where Propp's analysis of fairy tale is essentially structuralist, however, Whetter places his version of romance in diachronic relationship with earlier and later narrative forms, specifically novel and epic. If Whetter's romantic essentials – 'love, ladies, adventure and the happy ending' – relate to Propp's actants and plot functions, they also distinguish romance sharply from epic. His reading of romance as genre, then, recalls Jauss' important study. Both wish to break down the Aristotelian notion of genre as a universal, literary class, by introducing history as the locus of generic change. Transformation [End Page 261] is more important for Jauss than for Whetter, but the latter does insist on the specificity of medieval romance against other forms. For both, too, history is an extra-textual aspect of the text; the historically determined 'horizon of expectations' to which genre relates, according to Jauss, looks more abstract than Whetter's 'community of users', yet the latter is similarly extrapolated from meta-textual elements of self-referentiality and parody. If discussion of genre has ancient beginnings, discussion of romance is comparatively modern, but reaches back to the nineteenth century and includes numerous significant contributions. Whetter's own concern with particularizing the genre in terms of essential components means that much of his discussion simply illustrates the presence of his sentimental matrix. I have no doubt that a sense of romance is crucial to understanding texts, but worry when genre analysis seems to complete critical performance, diverting readers from other critical business. Whetter's own developed readings of texts like Havelok and Gawain and the Green Knight miss so much that the question of generic function can seem mismanaged. In many respects, Whetter's account of medieval romance accords closely with those of other scholars, in emphasising love and adventure, but, where most are reluctant to define the genre by eliminating texts on the ground that essential components do not figure, Whetter is not. 'Family resemblances', Wittgenstein's approach to language categorization, will not do, however attractive to others, because it proposes the relational role of overlapping similarities, rather than fixed, key components. Whereas Davenport, for example, argues that medieval terms for narrative forms never seem 'to have very sharp edges', Whetter sees the edges as very sharp indeed. Love and adventure are necessary; so are women and happy endings. In an important argument, then, he claims that where the happy ending is lacking, despite the presence of other typical characteristics, what we face is not a romance, but a generic hybrid, mixing romance and tragedy. What is most valuable for Whetter in the modern debate on genre is recognition that generic structures are binding, but inevitably open to adaptation. Since this permits him to argue that Middle English romance is a specific form, he can establish a strong base for reading Malory. Morte Darthur not only exemplifies the principle that texts are...

Neil Elliott, . The Arrogance of Nations: Reading Romans in the Shadow of Empire. Paul in Critical Contexts. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2008. xvi+223 pp. $29.00 (cloth).

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewNeil Elliott, . The Arrogance of Nations: Reading Romans in the Shadow of Empire. Paul in Critical Contexts. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2008. xvi+223 pp. $29.00 (cloth).John BarclayJohn BarclayDurham University. Search for more articles by this author Durham University.PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of Religion Volume 90, Number 1January 2010 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/649982 Views: 35Total views on this site © 2010 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. For permission to reuse, please contact [email protected]PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Reading Roman Comedy: Poetics and Playfulness in Plautus and Terence by ALISON SHARROCK

Reading Roman Comedy: Poetics and Playfulness in Plautus and Terence by ALISON SHARROCK

Malory's Contemporary Audience: The Social Reading of Romance in Late Medieval England . (Arthurian Studies, 66). Thomas H. Crofts

Previous articleNext article No AccessReviewsMalory's Contemporary Audience: The Social Reading of Romance in Late Medieval England . (Arthurian Studies, 66). Thomas H. Crofts Patricia Clare InghamPatricia Clare Ingham Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Speculum Volume 84, Number 4OCTOBER 2009 The journal of the Medieval Academy of America Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1017/S0038713400208312 Views: 9Total views on this site © 2009 The Medieval Academy of AmericaPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Book Review: The Arrogance of Nations: Reading Romans in the Shadow of Empire

Book Review: The Arrogance of Nations: Reading Romans in the Shadow of Empire

The Arrogance of Nations: Reading Romans in the Shadow of Empir – By Neil Elliott

Reviews in Religion & TheologyVolume 16, Issue 3 p. 340-342 The Arrogance of Nations: Reading Romans in the Shadow of Empir – By Neil Elliott Edward Mackenzie, Edward Mackenzie Birmingham Christian CollegeSearch for more papers by this author Edward Mackenzie, Edward Mackenzie Birmingham Christian CollegeSearch for more papers by this author First published: 26 June 2009 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9418.2009.00429_4.xRead the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Volume16, Issue3July 2009Pages 340-342 RelatedInformation

Review of David Odell-Scott (ed.),Reading Romans with Contemporary Philosophers and Theologians. Romans Through History and Cultures Series 7

Review of David Odell-Scott (ed.),<i>Reading Romans with Contemporary Philosophers and Theologians</i>. Romans Through History and Cultures Series 7

Webster's Response to Alyssa Lyra Pitstick, Light in Darkness

Though rarely addressed in a direct way, the theology of God's perfection is a central point at issue in contemporary Christian dogmatics. A good many debates of the moment turn on how the perfection of God's life is to be conceived: debates about the relation of the so-called immanent and economic Trinity; about the propriety of explicating the person and work of Christ through the metaphysics of divine and human natures; about the applicability of kenosis to account for the relation of the divine Word to the human career of Jesus; about the constitutive significance of temporality for the being of God; and much else besides. Recent disagreements amongst Barth scholars about the issue of the relation of the doctrine of divine election and the doctrine of the Trinity are in some measure animated by differing conceptions of the perfection of God, and one of the many ways of profiting from Dr Pitstick's book is to read it as, in part at least, an essay in defence of a certain construal of divine perfection. Indeed, one of my hopes for the book is that, once the noise of battle has subsided and the wounded have been dressed and taken to shelter, we may be able to engage peaceably and constructively with some of the material dogmatic issues to which it has drawn our attention. I do not propose to comment in detail on Dr Pitstick's evaluation of Balthasar; any judgements I might reach would be those of a mere amateur, one of those Protestants who in the 1970s discovered in Balthasar something which kept us reading Roman Catholic theology after Lonergan had wearied us and before we had been pointed to the treasures of ressourcement theology. Instead, I want to draw out from the book three doctrinal topics of capital importance: the ‘finished’ character of the redemptive work of Christ on the cross; the relation between theology and economy in the doctrine of the Trinity; and the doctrine of the hypostatic union – in all of which topics, of course, we are pressed to attend to the perfection of God and the acts of God.

Reading Revelation Romantically

[This article proposes a romantic reading of Revelation. Building on the earlier work of Donal McIlraith especially, it explores the possibilities of reading Revelation in terms of a romance plot. Aspects of the plot structure of Revelation, such as its ending, and comparative study with other ancient literature (including ancient romance novels and ancient Jewish literature, especially Song of Solomon ) are advanced in favour of this reading. The purpose or rhetorical function of this aspect of Revelation is viewed as serving to challenge the reader/hearer to more fervent discipleship of Jesus., ]

Hybridity and Reading Romans 13

Interpreters of Paul have made substantial progress in identifying anti- or counter-imperial strands in the writings of the apostle. In many cases, postcolonial theory has been an important resource for such interpretations. It has emphasized the imperial (or colonial) character of Roman rule and provided avenues of analysis of resistant action and discourse that are well grounded in theoretical and comparative context. Postcolonialism, however, does more than identify and valorize resistance; it also attends to the discourses of affiliation that colonial subjects so often generate. Homi Bhabha's articulation of `hybridity' as a rubric under which to understand the relationship between resistant and affiliative responses by colonial subjects enables a deeper understanding of Paul specifically in that area that the politically engaged readings of Paul have made even more enigmatic, namely the relationship of the affiliative Rom. 13.1-7 to the apostle's evidently resistant discourse elsewhere in his literary corpus.

Reading Romans with Contemporary Philosophers and Theologians. Edited by David Odell‐Scott

Reading Romans with Contemporary Philosophers and Theologians. Edited by David Odell‐Scott

Christ and Empire: From Paul to Postcolonial Times. By Joerg Rieger. * The Power of the Word: Scripture and the Rhetoric of Empire. By Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza. * Empire and the Christian Tradition: New Readings of Classical Theologians. Edited by Kwok Pui-lan, Don H. Compier and Joerg Rieger. * The Arrogance of Empire: Reading Romans in the Shadow of Empire.

Christ and Empire: From Paul to Postcolonial Times. By Joerg Rieger. * The Power of the Word: Scripture and the Rhetoric of Empire. By Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza. * Empire and the Christian Tradition: New Readings of Classical Theologians. Edited by Kwok Pui-lan, Don H. Compier and Joerg Rieger. * The Arrogance of Empire: Reading Romans in the Shadow of Empire.

“Breathing human passion”: Keats, Cornwall, Shelley and popular romanticism

Between 1819 and 1821, the now‐neglected poet Barry Cornwall was fêted in literary London, enjoying one of the highest profiles of any Romantic author. Several reviewers preferred his fashionable cadences to those of Keats or Shelley. Today, the negligible space accorded Cornwall in Romantic criticism is the legacy of his eclipse by writers whose reputations he helped promote through published reminiscences – including Hazlitt, Leigh Hunt, Charles Lamb and De Quincey. This essay seeks to rehabilitate Cornwall as an invaluable context for the receptions of Keats and Shelley, poets whose place within contemporary early nineteenth‐century print culture was more fraught than his own. I examine Cornwall’s remarkable dexterity in negotiating popular taste, and explore his complexly dynamic interaction with Keats. My discussion also focuses on Shelley’s antipathy towards Cornwall and his commercial success, showing how this ill‐disposition – given crucial shape by Thomas Love Peacock – played an important role in the genesis of one of Romanticism’s most urgent manifestos, A Defence of Poetry. Finally, this essay investigates what it was about Cornwall’s au courant style that guaranteed his popular appeal in Romantic reading culture, and also examines the conditions that led to the precipitous decline of his literary stock after 1823.

Charles Lamb on Romantic Reading and Social Decorum

Previous articleNext article No AccessRomanticism, Reading, and Translation: The Processes of Literacy Papers Delivered at the Wordsworth-Coleridge Association Meeting, 2007Charles Lamb on Romantic Reading and Social DecorumLee EricksonLee Erickson Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Wordsworth Circle Volume 39, Number 3Summer 2008 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/TWC24045754 Views: 1Total views on this site © 2008 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Introduction: Romanticism, Reading, and Translation: The Processes of Literacy

The correct translation of the Bible and of classical literature are among the roots of translation theory. With the Bible, faith was at stake: the major question was whether a translation was faithful and accurate, whether it was or wrong. Therefore, the ideal of the good translator as the one gets it right has influenced popular notions about translation. Most English readers rely on translation when reading the scriptures, or Homer, or Virgil, and so they expect to be dealt with adequately, to receive a correct, a true English version, an accurate preservation--or do readers prefer an aesthetically pleasing transformation? Where does accuracy end, where does pleasure begin? In linguistic terminology, a successful translation would ensure that the equivalent of the source language is reproduced in the target language (Nida/Taber, 12). Yet since Romantic writers are fundamentally concerned with the very nature of language, Romantic theories of translation, which constitute the foundation of modern translation theory, presume that translations must provide more than equivalents. Recent approaches have looked upon translation as cultural transfer (Bassnett/Lefevere, Snell-Hornby), cultural adaptation, or acculturation, and thus, the translator is no longer seen as working towards the higher aim of mediating between the divine and the human but as undertaking the secular task of linking two cultures. The centrality of translation to European Romanticism is undisputed. Through their reading and writing, individuals connected across linguistic and national boundaries, in fact, across the centuries, as Keats's sonnet On First Looking into Chapman's Homer illustrates, a poem which stages several acts of translation: a translation from ancient Greek into English, a transposition from Elizabethan English into Keats's linguistic presence, which was still under the influence of classicist ideals, and a transcendence of mundane concerns aiming at a union of poetic minds. Of the six papers presented on the two panels organized by the Wordsworth-Coleridge Association at the MLA in Chicago in December 2007, four (by Frederick Burwick, Michael R. Edson, Michael Macovski, Gillen D'Arcy Wood) testify to the necessity of probing much more deeply into issues of Romantic translation, whereas the other two (by Lee Erickson and myself) map out contexts of Romantic reading. While all of the first four papers share the belief that translation studies must be context-sensitive, they constitute case studies of transfer, adaptation, not just of mere language but also of national tradition, gender roles, the perception of Self and Other. Drawing on Schleiermacher, Stael, Goethe, Carlyle, Austin as well as Novalis, Burwick's paper maps out theories of Romantic translation and proves that the combat between fidelity, aesthetic pleasure, and cultural adaptation is by no means new. He highlights Stael's demand to keep the ambience in a translation, to make the reader aware of the text as translation, an idea that has recently reappeared in Venuti's much-quoted term foreignization (1995). If Stael's position sounds benign and wants to accept the alien into one's own intellectual horizon, to learn from the Other, Macovski's reference to Nietzsche, who likened pre-Romantic translation to conquering, introduced an inimical note and posed the question whether translations were necessarily always friendly acts of intercultural communication. Only in the late 18th century did the autonomy of the foreign source text, the original, come to be recognized. Thus, a translation could be politically and intellectually liberating because it would import new viewpoints. Drawing on Byron's Armenian writings, which include translations and a grammar, Macovski showed how the poet evokes associations with the Turkish oppression of Greece and eventually provides a mirror for a classic British past. …

The Common Law Illusion: Literary Justice in Coleridge’s On the Constitution of the Church and State

This paper traces Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s engagement with issues of legal interpretation late in his career and most particularly in On the Constitution of the Church and State . Having long noted the political and social ramifications of the supposedly systematic interpretation of legal precedent lying at the heart of the common law, Coleridge suggests that a group of cultural trustees, the Clerisy, could perform a quasi-judicial role to guide reading in the public sphere. Only through such leadership, he suggests, could justice be revived from its then-defunct state. However, the paper concludes by suggesting neither Coleridge nor any modern legal scholar who invokes romantic reading strategies can achieve the vaunted interpretive objectivity legal authority seems to require. Precedent is, in fact, a rhetorical illusion, a repression of revolutionary trauma experienced in and before the Romantic Period.

Romantic Juvenal: Translation, Annotation, and Allusion

In Literary Hours (1798), Nathan Drake comments, and historical allusion [s] ... are not to be understood ... from superficial perusal but require reiterated efforts (172). Drake discusses a work that the Romantics regarded a vernacular classic, John Dyer's The Fleece (1757). But Drake could just as easily discuss a classic of Greece or Rome. The reading practice Drake prescribes--attending to and identifying historical references, or what I will call allusive reading--was associated with Greek and Latin texts. The practice of allusion--reading originated in grammar-school exercises involving the memorization and limitation of classical poets. As Lucy Newlyn observes in Reading. Writing, and Romanticism (2000), the practice of allusive reading grew in the Romantic period (296). (1) However, many readers, including Drake, lacked a classical education to practice it. I would like to proposes explanation for allusive reading: namely, the annotation of classical translators. After 1785, there were not only more in classical translations than before but also they focus more on allusions than in previous translations. Translations of Juvenal exemplify this trend. The footnotes in William Gifford's 1802 translation, for example, call attention to historical allusions and in turn shape the way audiences read Juvenal. In addition, the in these translations signal wider changes in Romantic reading practices. Romantic translations of Juvenal differ from previous ones. Consider, for example, Dryden's The Satires of Decimus Junius Juvenalis Translated, 1693. In Dryden's version, each of Juvenal's sixteen satires receives about twenty-five notes. Placed at the end of each satire, the appear optional. The layout reflects Dryden's desire to avoid ... the borrow'd Learning of Marginal Notes. He minimizes the need for by omitt[ing] most of the Proper Names (2) and replacing them with generalized examples. In Juvenal's first satire, for instance, Dryden replaces references to Massa and Carus, informers for Domitian, with Spies (1.52), and references to Proculeius and Gillo, Roman legacy-hunters, with the universalizing' pronouns One ... another (1.60). For Dryden, transmitting Juvenal's timeless spirit trumps capturing his historical particularity. Similar ideas guide translators in the 18th century. Although John Stirling's The Satires of Juvenal (1760) includes references that Dryden omits, the format also de-emphasizes historical allusions by placing the explanations in a closing index, implying that the satires can be comprehended without historical knowledge. Moreover, Stirling's explanations state the obvious, further implying their superfluity: Massa and Carus are identified as Informers and Proculeius and Gillo as Adulterers, information easily derived from context. Stirling models his after Thomas Sheridan's The Satires of Juvenal. Translated (2nd ed., 1745). In placing his explanations in footnotes, Sheridan anticipates Romantic translators. But in content, both Sheridan's and Stirling's look back to Dryden rather than forward to Gifford. Their exhibit Dryden's generalizing impulse, presenting historical figures more as universal types (informers) and less as specific individuals. By the end of the century, the practice had changed and had become an integral part of the reading experience. Edward Owen's The Satires of Juvenal, Translated into English Verse (1785) and Martin Madan's A New and Literal Translation of Juvenal and Persius (1789) contain five to ten times as many as Dryden's translation, most identifying allusions. Also, they both use footnotes instead of endnotes to focus the reader's attention on allusions. Of the seven other translations of Juvenal published between 1785 and 1829, three are comparable to Owen's and Madan's annotations, (2) reflecting the new demand for annotation. According to one of Madan's reviewers, the notes alone, independent of the translation, will . …

Reading Romans through the Centuries ‐ by Jeffrey P. Greenman and Timothy Larsen

<i>Reading Romans through the Centuries</i> ‐ by Jeffrey P. Greenman and Timothy Larsen

Reading Romans through the Centuries: From the Early Church to Karl Barth. Edited by JEFFREY P. GREENMAN and TIMOTHY LARSEN.

These eleven papers from a conference sponsored by Tyndale Seminary, Toronto, in 2002, select six interpreters who would be on anyone's list (Ambrosiaster, Chrysostom, Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Barth), three who deserve to be there (Aquinas, Tyndale, Wesley), two interesting surprises (Hodge, Colenso), and at least one surprising omission: Origen. The writers, who all teach (or in the case of John Webster, taught) in North America, are all church historians, historical or systematic theologians, not exegetes, which perhaps explains the exclusion of modern biblical scholarship, if not the evangelical slant. All the contributions are worth reading but the space available to each was insufficient to draw out the value of reception history for contemporary theology, or to yield refreshing new insights on St Paul.